


Cuts Like A Knife

by Safiyabat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, mentions of Sam Winchester - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:38:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1956993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sam jumps into the Cage, Dean goes through his things with the intention of donating them to Goodwill.  He finds something surprising.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cuts Like A Knife

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to the Bitter Sam!Girls Club July Fanwork Challenge. The theme this month was Sam and knives. It's a little weird for me because Sam doesn't actually appear in this story at all.
> 
> Note: The character death has already happened; this is post-Swan Song. TW for suicide, though.
> 
> Supernatural and the characters from the show are not my property. I make no money from this or any other work of fan fiction.

After Sam’s fall – Dean couldn’t bring himself to think of it as jumping, his baby brother ending his own life in the most horrific way possible; no, he had to think of it as a fall – Dean went to Lisa as he’d promised. She took him in, didn’t even mind that he spent a good week more or less catatonic with a bottle. Slowly he began to pull himself back together or at least as together as he could be without his larger limb. After a week he started interacting with Ben and Lisa a little at a time. A little later he went to his first barbecue as a civilian. Then he got his first legal job. Then he took Ben to a baseball game.

After a couple of months Lisa suggested that donating Sam’s things might be a good way to help him heal. Dean resisted at first. The kid was being shredded for all eternity and she wanted to go dump his legacy at Goodwill. On the other hand Sam himself, well, he’d probably be right on board. “It’s not like I’m ever going to need that crap again.” Dean could practically hear his voice, see those massive shoulders shrug. “And it’s not like I could haunt them.” And Sam had been a pretty rare size; there had to be at least one other Sasquatch down on his luck who’d appreciate finding something at the thrift shop that he could actually wear. If Dean ever took them out and looked at them, used them to remember Sam by it would be one thing. He didn’t. They sat in their duffel in the trunk of the Impala, under a tarp in the garage, hidden where the sun would never shine. 

He couldn’t just dump the duffel though, just toss it into a drop box in the supermarket parking lot. Who knew what kind of incriminating stuff that freaky kid had stashed away in there? It would be hard going through the crap, but what kind of a man would Dean really be if he couldn’t look at some bundles of cloth without breaking down, right? 

He opened the bag and the first item brought a chuckle. Here was that terrible button-down shirt, the one that looked like faded upholstery. Dean shook his head. He’d given Sam no end of crap about that one, but he’d just shrugged. “It was fifty cents, Dean.” There was that wretched striped and spotted thing Dean insisted half a buck was too much for too. Sam hadn’t cared. He never did. As long as his body was covered he didn’t care what covered it. If the kid had just paid a little more attention to how he looked he’d have had women lined up around the block. 

He dug around a little more. A couple of books found their way into his hand. These weren’t work-type books, nothing occult-ish or lore-ish about them at all. These were frivolous crap. Dad would have had a cow and a half if he’d have seen these. _A Tale Of Two Cities_ , because that was going to help him fight Lucifer somehow. _Beloved_ , whatever that was. 

He emptied all of the cloth from the bag, but one bundle hit the ground with a more final “thud” than cloth was generally expected to offer. Dean tried not to think about the metaphor there. Cloth, after all, shouldn’t go thud. He grabbed the item. It was an old brown hoodie of Sam’s, one that hadn’t fit the kid in at least a couple of years. Not since he’d Hulked out, anyway, and it had been wrapped around something heavy and solid. It probably wasn’t cursed or anything; Sammy had always been so anal-retentive about that kind of crap he’d have stuck it into a curse box or melted it down or whatever. But what could he have wanted to hide this badly? Something Sam wanted to keep secret. That was Sammy for you, always wanting to keep secrets. Well, the kid didn’t get to keep anything secret anymore. Not where he was. Dean slowly unwrapped the wad of cotton jersey. 

His fingers wrapped around the object before he could really register what it was: an iron knife, old and rusty and bloodstained. He frowned. Sam took care of his equipment. Right before he’d taken his plunge he’d taken care of it with an obsessive gleam gleam that had Bobby muttering into his beer. But this knife he hid deep in the bowels of his bag, didn’t even clean it. There was still blood on it. Blood and… other stuff. 

With a lurch, Dean recognized the instrument and it was all he could do to stagger over to the wastebasket before he started retching. This was Jake Talley’s knife. Sam had been murdered with this knife all those years ago. He had no idea how his little brother had gotten his hands on it, but he had and he’d apparently been carrying it around with him like some kind of… freaking treasure. Like a treasure so precious he had to freaking hide it from his freaking brother. “Jesus, Sammy,” he whispered.” 

But why? Why would he want to lug this thing around with him? Was it like the memories in his (useless now) Heaven? It seemed like every terrible time in Dean’s life had been the absolute bee’s knees for Sammy, hadn’t it? Because Sam had escaped. Escaped the family, escaped him. When he’d gone off to Flagstaff to live with a dog and eat pizza every day Dean had been worried to death, not to mention the way he’d had to deal with Dad’s wrath when he’d found out. When he’d taken off for Stanford he hadn’t thought one bit about the fact that he was abandoning the mission, abandoning their mother. Abandoning Dean. Maybe that death, that first death – maybe it had been something like that. Maybe he’d seen his death as an escape from Dean, from the family. Maybe this knife was a souvenir of that moment. 

Dean flung the offending instrument down into the pile. Damn it. No wonder the kid had been so pissed. Dean had brought him back, but he thought he’d escaped. 

Except… that hadn’t been how it had been, had it? It wasn’t what Sam had said to him. He’d pointed out how Dean had felt when their father had sold his soul for Dean, and that Dean was condemning Sam to the same misery. He leaned down and picked up the knife again. This knife… this knife had started everything really. Sure, Azazel had laid out the groundwork but if Jake hadn’t plunged the thing into his brother’s back Dean wouldn’t have sold his soul. Dean wouldn’t have gone to Hell. 

And Dean knew Sam. Dean knew how the kid took every little criticism to heart. It never mattered who the criticism came from – demons, their father, angels, random ghosts – every little barb and slight went straight to the kid’s soul. He’d always been that way, at least a bit. It had gotten worse after Cold Oak. Every least little bit of guilt and accusation that someone could throw at him, Sam lapped it up and locked it inside himself as he fought to keep Dean from going to Hell, and then to stop the world from ending. And Dean, he’d had plenty to hurl himself hadn’t he? The only person – the only one – offering anything to counteract all that hate and spite and venom had been Ruby. 

They’d all thought Sam had been arrogant, puffed up on himself, didn’t care about anyone but himself, but here he’d been carrying around this piece of self-accusation, this reminder of his failures the entire time. Dean held the knife for a long time, a tear running down his face.

In the end, he didn’t donate the clothes. He burned them instead, all of them but especially the upholstery shirt. Then he went out and bought a sapling, he didn’t pay much attention to what kind. He dug a hole, six feet deep, and he buried that knife in the backyard. He planted the tree over the knife. The sapling took hold and when Ben ultimately identified the thing as a Crimson King maple he decided that maybe fate had a sense of humor after all.


End file.
